Heroism
by Rachel A. Prongs
Summary: Death, much as it may be the beginning of the next great adventure, had come to him. And he was afraid.


_**Warnings:**__ Rated for suicide theme._

He was alone in the room. Sterile, cold. He sat against one wall, elbows on his knees.

One of the tiles next to his boot was cracked slightly.

He let his head fall back, closed his eyes, and felt the cold cement wall against the back of his head.

_There was nothing heroic about death._

_Dying._

There were people just outside. He could almost feel them. They would be quiet, their breathing the only sound as they watched him.

He allowed his breathing to even out, but he couldn't stop his heart from beating.

He could hear it. The rhythm of it elevated, beating quickly and harshly in his ears, drowning out any sound that made it into the room.

_When he was but a child he'd had notions about courage. Never back down from a fight. Never let an insult go unpunished._

_That wasn't courage. It was just pride._

How had it come to this?

He had been so young once. A child. With a child's dreams. A child's naivety. A child's hope for the future.

A future he'd never had.

He'd been a dead man walking at the tender age of one year and three months.

_"I'd rather die."_

_Such a meaningless phrase._

_All sane human beings would rather live. _

_See another day. Smell the spring air, feel the heat of the midsummer sun, suffer the dreary fall rain and feel the sting of the bitter winter cold._

_Grieve the loss of loved ones._

_Feel the pain and heartache of betrayal._

_The kisses of a lover._

_The gentle touch of your child._

What was it that gave people the courage to die for what they believed in? Hope for a better life for those they protected?

He didn't know. He'd been there, on the battlefield. Risked his life for what he believed in. To protect those he loved. Still he didn't know.

It was the right thing to do, he supposed.

His life or that of hundreds. Thousands.

_As long as there is life, there is hope. _

There was no hope for him.

Still, he breathed.

_In._

_Out._

He would rather live.

He knew they were watching. He didn't mind. It was rather like waiting on the deathbed of a terminal patient, he supposed. Wanting to be there till the very end. Offer what comfort could be offered.

_In._

_Out._

His eyes slid back to the cracked tile. The crack spread from that tile onto the next, creating a fine, yellow line in the white.

_In._

_Out._

He tried to be grateful. Remember that he'd lived more than 16 years more than he should. Appreciate the good moments in his life and the people he had loved. Loved, even now.

Tears welled in his eyes. He allowed them to fall, sliding down his cheeks.

He would so _very much _like to live.

Was this courage? To die, so others could live?

_In._

_Out._

_One life in exchange for many._

Choiceless.

That was what he was. Choiceless.

_Death could spark revolutions._

_Death could incite wars._

Death, much as it may be the beginning of the next great adventure, had come to him. And he was afraid.

Where was that vaunted Gryffindor courage now?

_In._

_Out._

Courage. He no longer believed in it. He had made this choice because it was the right thing to do - to save lives, to give everyone else a chance.

But now he felt only fear and grief.

_In._

Fear of death.

Grief for everything he would never be allowed to do. For the life he would never live.

_Out._

When it finally came, it was painless and quick, as had been intended.

_In._

The yellow crack in the tile faded into a thin line and then to nothing. The grey concrete walls grew closer and then they faded back.

The white tiles flowed into the grey walls and swirled and swirled and swirled and he heard a voice that called out to him but that couldn't be true because the room was warded and no one else was in there and…

_Out._

* * *

_"In 1998, during the Second War, it was discovered that Voldemort had managed to attain near-immortality by splitting his soul into several pieces, in such a way that should one of his soul vessels be damaged or destroyed, the other soul vessels would keep him alive. Though attempts were made to destroy all of his soul vessels, one of them was discovered to inhabit a living human being, one Harry James Potter, also known as the Boy-Who-Lived._

_After realising that Voldemort's final and main vessel, who was at the time inhabiting a magically constructed body, could not be killed unless his final soul vessel - also called a horcrux - was destroyed. In an effort to save the British Wizarding Society and spare human life, Harry Potter made the extraordinary choice to end his own life by poison, and in that destroying Voldemort's final horcrux._

_His heroic sacrifice signaled the end of the Second War, even though it should go on for a few more months before Voldemort could be hunted down and killed, one final time._

_His death also marks the beginning of the Great Change, in which Wizarding Britain started to move away from its fundamentalistic view on blood purity and into a new era of social cooperation, to the point where the phrases pureblood and mudblood - among other derogatory ones referring to mixed heritages - has been close to eradicated from the language."_

_Excerpt; The History of the Second War - its effect on Wizarding Society, 5th edition, 2032._


End file.
